A close reading of Thomas Friedman

It hurts. It’s painful. It didn’t have to be done, but I’m grateful that Barry Rubin has undertaken a close reading of one of Thomas Friedman’s recent profusions of inanity. Rubin begins with an apt quotation from Bob Dylan and then says in his own words:

The entertainment director on the ship of fools that constitutes so much mainstream analysis of the Middle East—I refer, of course, to Thomas Friedman—has produced a wonderful paragraph that beautifully characterizes the problem, exquisitely expressing a Western mentality that not only makes it impossible to understand the Middle East but even to set up the question in a way people that could help people even begin to confront the truth. So perhaps it is worth disassembling. Sound like fun? Let’s go!